The title story, which maps the friendship between two beautiful and mysteriously doomed young women in 1940s Los Angeles, to the tale of the wife of a well-to-do businessman who is ravished by, and elopes with, a lover who is a hyena - Black Dahlia & White Rose explores the commingling of sexual love and violence, the tumult of family life, and resonates with Oates' predilection for dark humor and her gift for voice.
"...showcases [Joyce Carol Oates'] talent for imbuing mundane events with menace and the kind of irony that springs from narrow brushes with disaster... hypnotic prose ensures that readers will be unable to look away."
Kirkus Reviews
"In [Joyce Carol Oates'] fresh, direct, energetic and often shocking prose, she bestows life wherever she turns, excavating in what first appears to be ordinary ground and discovering that to live means to be in trouble."
NPR
"Unsettling, potent, and suspenseful, these well-crafted and haunting stories attest to Oates' superior imagination and mastery of the craft, and provide a welcome addition to her oeuvre."
